The present invention relates to a medical knife, in which a pair of blades are mounted in parallel, spaced apart, at the front of a handle.
Medical knives in which a pair of blades are mounted in parallel, spaced apart, as in the present invention, are primarily used to cut tissue at a predetermined width, these being medical knives which are used, for example, in surgery for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in the knee, for severing the patellar tendon, for making incisions into bones when collecting tibia plugs or patella plugs, or for collecting tissue at a predetermined widths or the like, while maintaining the spacing of the blades.
Medical knives include those which, after use, are washed and undergo resterilization and are then reused, and those that are disposable. Recently disposable medical knives are often used, in light of the costs of infection prevention and resterilization. The medical knife of the present invention is likewise directed to disposable medical knifes.
Medical knives having two blades are, for example, formed by way of insert molding, in the manner of the knife described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,026,385. In the case of insert molding, the molding is performed with the handle and the blades integrally joined, which facilitates manufacturing and reduces costs, making this a suitable manufacturing method for disposable knives. Normally, in surgeries using medical knives having two blades, knives having differing blade spacings are used as needed. With the knife described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,026,385, it is not possible to adjust the spacing of the two blades, and therefore knives with different blade spacings must be provided. Accordingly, separate molds are necessary in order to manufacture the knives with the different blade spacings, and costs are correspondingly increased. That is to say, if it were possible to manufacture knives having different blade spacings using the same mold, it would be possible to reduce costs.
Knives allowing the spacing between two blades to be adjusted have therefore been proposed, such as the knife described in JP-01-008989-U. However, if this entire knife is used as a disposable item, the manufacturing costs will be high, which has poor profitability.